Other Game Features

Contents

Daily runs are a feature in Nuclear Throne, which allows each player to play the same run as everyone else (using a randomly generated seed which is the same for everyone), but each player has only one chance to compete in each daily for the best rank/score on the leaderboards.

Each daily starts at 00:00 and ends at the same time (depending on your time zone, it could differ), so everyone has exactly one day to compete on the daily.

Each daily score and rank are determined by the amount of kills you have, which increases the value of certain crowns like the Crown of Blood. Players cannot start with a Crown, or Golden Weapon and cannot use the Proto Chest on their daily run.

Once you are done with your daily run, in the daily menu you will see your friends and global leaderboards.

During the daily, on the loading screen and main menu screen, the word DAILY is displayed to remind players that they are currently participating in the daily run. The RESTART button from the main menu is also removed. A calendar icon appears in the top-left corner of the HUD during dailies.

Weeklies run every weekend from the first minute of Saturday until the last minute of Sunday UTC, and are basically seeded runs with a set loadout. Your character, Crown, and starting weapon are all fixed, and you won't find a single Crown Vault in your runs. You can play a weekly as much as you want until the time runs out. You can try optimizing your route, mutation picks, and strategies, but also master some of the quirks specific levels throw at you. Every weekend will bring a new weekly and a new weekly leaderboard to conquer.

Completing a weekly will unlock the Crown for the character as normal. This can be an easier way to acquire post-loop Crowns.

After entering the Loop Portal you will return to the place where you pick your character - The Campfire (area 0-1). After clearing it you will teleport back to the Desert but this time with some gameplay changes which increases difficulty. You can loop the game for as long as your character stays alive.

Each loop increases the HP of all enemies by 5%. HP of Bosses first increases by 33%, then by 5%.

The game's difficulty number continues to increase with each portal your character enters, which means that the amount of enemies spawning in areas on loops will be much larger than before looping.

There's a random chance that in place of a single enemy, a group of them spawns.

Elite versions of enemies (like the Golden Scorpion) have a higher chance of spawning on loops.

Bosses will become stronger the further you loop, by gaining new attacks and becoming more aggressive.

After looping the game a set number of I.D.P.D. portals appear on every area except the Crown Vault and 7-3. Two I.D.P.D. portals appear after you kill a certain amount of enemies in a level. Each loop adds another pair of portals. The moment any of these open is randomized and anywhere between 20%-80% of all enemies killed on that stage. For example, on loop 3, the first pair of portals opens after you've killed 27% of enemies, the second on 45% and the third pair on 78%. All of the % values are randomized from 20% to 80% and are different for each area.

The Campfire (area 0-1) and its Boss become a part of the regular game progression.

If an I.D.P.D. portal opens, there's a chance that a single Elite I.D.P.D. unit spawns from it instead of regular I.D.P.D.. The spawn chance equals 1/(6 - number of loops). It ranges from 20% on loop 1 to 40% on loop 2.

After looping the game a set number of I.D.P.D. Vans appear in every area except the Crown Vault and 7-3. One I.D.P.D. Van appears after you kill a certain amount of enemies in a level. Each loop adds another van. The moment any of these appear is randomized and anywhere between 20%-80% of all enemies killed on that stage. For example, on loop 3, the first van appears after you've killed 27% of enemies, the second on 45% and the third on 78%. All of the % values are randomized from 20% to 80% and are different for each area.

After the Campfire area on your third loop, all I.D.P.D. become mutated. I.D.P.D. Freaks will replace all regular and Elite I.D.P.D. units. Vans will unload I.D.P.D. Freaks and instantly explode after that. I.D.P.D. Freaks will also resurrect from enemy corpses which continuously happens on its own if at least one enemy is left alive on the level.

Achievements are rewarded to the player after reaching certain milestones or achieving hidden goals in Nuclear Throne. After unlocking each achievement they will be listed on your Steam profile page. There is a total of 44 achievements in the game.

Stream Keys allow you to access analytics and information on your runs, live as they happen, in JSON format every 15 seconds. You can use this data to create overlays for your livestream, interactive applications, analytics, or other things you can come up with. Check this page for more info.

We've got the first steps towards seeding now. It'll allow you to manually enter a seed, which should technically generate the same level over and over again. We don't really intend this to be used to get really good at one particular level, as Nuclear Throne is about improvisation and randomness, but it does allow for a couple of cool things, namely, playing the same level as your friends/enemies! Racing! In the future, it'll also allow us to do cool things like Daily Challenges.

So how does this seeding work? Right now, it's pretty hacky. It requires you to put a file called seed.txt in your save folder (info below), and in the first line of that .txt you can put any number or text you like, which will then be used as the seed for your level. Delete seed.txt if you want to go back to random runs.

Save locations, might be hidden folders:

Windows user

users/yourname/appdata/local/nuclearthrone/

OSX user

~/Library/Application\ Support/com.vlambeer.nuclearthrone

Linux user

home folder/.config/nuclearthrone

We'll soon integrate this with the options menu, but just didn't have the time and energy left. You see, making seeding was HARD. Every time it was about 99% done, something else went and broke everything else completely. Let's just say JW suffered some migraine to get this working. Anyway, more user-friendliness in the future!

Seeding isn't working perfectly yet. There's, at least, a couple of things that'll totally break it. First of all, the seeding doesn't know how to handle different routes yet. If you go to a secret level/crown vault, it'll most probably change the levels you'll get. If you absolutely want the same levels as someone else, agree on the route taken towards the Throne. Secondly, enemy drops are not seeded, but random. This means that an enemy might drop different weapons on different runs. We're still looking into how we'll handle this!

If you decide to play with seeds, please let us know on the Steam Forums about your experiences in as much detail as possible. Are you getting different results on different runs? We'd love to know what you did differently this time. Thanks!

Local co-op allows for two people to play the game at a time. Co-op is selected from the main menu, just under the 'play' option. Each player must select a different mutant to begin. You can choose the same mutant if one selects it via controller and the other using mouse.

Each character begins with whatever their starting weapon is and appropriate ammo. Health, weapons, and ammo are tracked separately, but radiation and level are shared. Both players are in control of mutation selection, so it's best to agree on which one is desired. If either player chose Horror, they must be the one to go through the portal in order to get the extra mutation choice, and the radiation beam will drain the rads from the shared pool, so use it with caution. Every time a mutation is picked, it will affect both characters. Crowns likewise affect both characters.

When one mutant dies, they leave a faded image of their damaged animation, which the other mutant can touch in order to revive them. When a mutant is revived, half of the living mutant's health is taken away and given to the one being revived. If the amount of health being taken is too high for the dead mutant's health bar (such as when reviving Melting), any extra health will be removed and wasted. This health is always split evenly, with any extra being simply removed, meaning that if someone with one health tries to revive another, they will simply both die. If either mutant stays dead for too long, the other mutant will start to steadily lose health, even during loading screens, and if you go through a portal while your partner is dead, there is essentially no way to continue the game.

Having two players does not increase the amount of weapon or ammo drops, so ammo will be a serious concern and should be handled carefully. Any ammo that gets sucked into the end level portal will be given to both players as the same ammo type. When one player walks over a gun, they are given the ammo for it, so if the other grabs it, they will not get any ammo for it.

Only the main player can unlock skins on co-op. Crowns are unlocked for the character on the Throne or one the loop portal.